Computer Programming skillz...

[blufive]

Joel Spolsky does it again. For the bulk of this essay, he's spot on - I'm presently working on a project which was initially designed by a bunch of people who read the tutorials and thought they knew it all. Ugh.

[link: my chromatic sibling]

Comments

[karmicnull.livejournal.com]

Interesting reading. I'm not sure I entirely agree, mind you. One of my colleague Alan's favourite rants goes along these lines:


Interviewer: Hello... (reads CV) ... Michaelangelo. So you're applying for our job painting the acrylic mural in the new company HQ?

Michaelangelo: Yes.

Interviewer: Do you have any past experience?

Michaelangelo: Well there was the Sistine Chapel. It had some excellent reviews.

Interviewer: Hmmm. Acccording to your CV that was in Oil, not Acrylic!

Michaelangelo: Yes it was - but I'm confident I'll be able to pick up Acrylics fairly quickly.

Interviewer: you did realise that experience with Acrylics was a pre-requisite for this job?

Michaelangelo: Pope Julius II comissioned me to design and build his tomb. My statue of the dying slave won great accolades. I'm sure he'll verify my competence in a variety of media.

Interviewer: I'm sorry. It stated quite clearly in the job description that experience with Acrylics was a pre-requisite for this post. We have another candidate, 'Dodgy Bob' from Bob's painters and decorators (no job too small), who has been working in Acrylics for the last 7 years, and he's quite clearly better qualified for this job. To be frank I don't know why you're wasting my time.

Michaelangelo: Duh.

etc.


Along similar lines, I think that the comments he makes about paradigm shifts between OS's is to a certain extent valid, but I'm not so sure about the switches between programming languages. Was it Knuth or Kernigan who wrote that they didn't feel somenoe was qualified to be called a software engineer until they had at least half a dozen different languages under their belt? Speaking for myself, given a choice I'd rather have an experienced Smalltalk programmer lead my complex Java project than a grad with 18 months Java and nothing else under his belt.

Of course in RL, the choices one has to make are never quite as clear-cut as that...

[blufive.livejournal.com]

Having recently made the transition from Win32 to Unix/J2EE, there are definite issues there. About programming languages, yes, cross-language experience is very useful. The main point I think he's getting it is the sheer depth and breadth of knowledge that is required to be really proficient in any given programming role. You can pick up a lot from reading the tutorial, but once you've been doing it for real for 2-3 years, you know the wrinkles.

I disagree with him in places, too, but it's interesting reading.